Deregulation is not solution to tainted drugs

OUR VIEW

While it is understandable that lawmakers at the federal and state levels would want to be careful drafting the right response to last year's meningitis outbreak, that should not mean they should lapse into inaction.

And, more importantly, lawmakers should not take backward steps that will make the threat of tainted medications only worse.

As a Tennessean report noted this week, members of Congress in November promised legislation that would clarify regulations surrounding compounding pharmacies and boost safety. Those promises came amid the drama of hearings, when lawmakers heard about the 48 people who died and the more than 720 who were sickened with meningitis caused by moldy steroid medicine. Tennessee alone saw 14 deaths.

Some in Congress are waiting to see documents from the Food and Drug Administration. There is the real risk with Congress that its members will simply move on to the fiscal crisis - and do nothing about that, either.

Meanwhile, Tennessee state Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin who has been in office all of two months, is trying to remove a state requirement that, if followed, may help prevent the next tainted-medicine outbreak.

Why would he do such a thing?

Well, Haile is a compounding pharmacist who apparently wants to make his job easier and more lucrative, and as a legislator, he can write a bill to do just that. The state law he objects to requires that compounded drugs be prepared only with a patient-specific prescription. Compounding medications one patient a time takes longer and is meant to prevent pharmacists from giving that compound to other patients.

According to Sen. Haile, if Tennessee didn't have that requirement, enough medications could be compounded in Tennessee to no longer need out-of-state companies such as New England Compounding Center. Good for business? Yes. Good for patient safety? Probably not.

We know that regulators allowed New England Compounding to skirt the requirement to prepare patient-specific prescriptions.

That Sen. Haile is focused on removing oversight at this time distracts from the clear priority: patient safety. Tennessee should not be changing what regulations it places on compounders when so many questions remain.

At some point in the future, it might make sense to focus on how to compound drugs for multiple patients. But right now, people are still trying to get to the bottom of 48 deaths.